My Personal Renaissance

Having surgery in which a team of doctors and nurses use a surgical saw to open your breastbone and then cut into your heart and aorta to replace a diseased aortic valve and repair your enlarged aorta due to the diseased valve, is life-changing.  Life giving, and life-changing.  On March 4, 2025, I had that surgery.  Everything that happens in my life afterward is a bonus.  I live now in "the bonus round."

I chose to have the surgery, because without it I would slip into heart failure and likely die within 5 years.  My surgeon, thinking at one point that I was backing out, (I wasn't), told me "That valve is killing you every day! If you don't have the surgery, you're going to be miserable!"

I did show up on March 4, 2025, and with any luck I will get another 25 years or so before leaving this mortal coil.

A mentor of mine who had a similarly invasive heart surgery himself tells me my work will change...get better.  So, in addition to calling this extra time I've been given a "bonus round," I also am calling it my personal renaissance.

I need a renaissance.  It's so easy to get distracted by things and people and activities that don't actually help an artist improve his or her skill.  Plein air events are especially brutal because an artist is seemingly just a worker, painting on demand.  There's a landmine of personalities to negotiate and not every artist or event is as friendly as one might wish. After this adventure through surgery and a stint in ICU, I am fully able to say, "I'm not everyone's cup of tea, and I'm ok with that."  

I intend to stay quiet until I fully recover, until I regain the endurance I had, which may take the rest of the year.  I haven't been home long, but soon I'll have the strength to stand (or sit) at the easel and use up some blank canvas I bought and cut years ago and never used.  No work done on those canvases might ever be shown to anyone, but I intend to get the brush going.  With any luck, the getting started in my personal renaissance may attract my muse.  And I'm convinced the muse will only come if I'm engaged and emotionally prepared to disengage from noise, even worthwhile art noise.

Being hooked up to a heart-lung machine that breathed for me and kept my blood flowing while my own heart was still so the surgeon could work, was a reality in my procedure.  I was unaware of all of it while under anesthesia.  I had a great team of medical professionals in the operating room working on me and seeing about my aftercare.  I made it through. Still, being that close to death changes you.

I was having difficulty convincing my family that I was able to go home after being released. They wanted me to go to an inpatient rehab facility, which I had considered (and rejected) at one point.  Then in the hospital, family, scared by the surgery, wanted to change the plan.  I wanted to stick to my current and set plan of going home with assigned caregivers, (a good friend and a cousin) that would get me through the first two weeks at home.  One of the surgical assistants who was overseeing my care in the hospital told me, "This is the one time in your life you get to live for yourself.  

And I'm trying to remember that as I recover and get closer to standing at the easel.  The rest of 2025 will be dedicated to time at the easel.  And everything that comes in life after 2025, every painting, every show, every plein air outing will happen because I decided in favor of having a bonus round or a personal renaissance, by showing up to major surgery on March 4, 2025.